Derek Prince - Don't Help People Who Are Not Willing To Change
Paul was talking to Timothy, as a minister. He says if people are not willing to change, leave them to themselves. How much time is wasted in contemporary Christianity by counseling people who will never change? I have a friend who was a minister in Australia, he’s retired now. A very successful minister with a large congregation. He had a number of young pastors working under him. One day he said to them: All your books on psychology and counseling, I want you to throw them away. From now on we’re going to counsel people only out of the Bible.
And then a couple came to him whom he had been counseling for several years, with marriage problems, and he said to them: From now on I’m not going to counsel you because you’re disobeying the word of God. He said to the husband: The Bible says love your wife. You don’t love your wife. He said to the wife: The Bible says be subject to your husband. You’re not subject to your husband. So he said: I’m not going to deal with you. Until you will obey the word of God I have no more time for you. What a lot of time he saved himself. I mean, I have spent hours in counseling in the past. I’ve counseled many people who wanted deliverance from demons but I learned to say something. If they had too many theological problems and too many questions, I used to say this: Deliverance is for the desperate. You’re not desperate. Come back when you are.
So, I believe that’s all part of what Paul said to Timothy. Leave them alone. Don’t waste time on people who will not change. If a person is willing to change, God will go to endless lengths to help them. But if they want to stay the way they are, God leaves them to themselves. Well, we must go on. If you look at the rest of this chapter, and I won’t deal with it, you’ll find that the secret undermining force is the occult. We’ll look just quickly in verse 8: As Jannes and Jambres resisted Moses, so these also resist the truth. Jannes and Jambres were the two magicians who had a contest with Moses and Aaron. That’s the first witch’s covenant mentioned in the Bible, the magicians of Egypt in Exodus chapter 4. But behind the corruption of human nature is the subtle, deceiving, corrupting influence of the occult. And that’s the force that hastens the corruption.
And then in verse 13 Paul says: But evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. Now where the Bible says, or this translation says impostors (let me say I’ve learned Greek since I was ten years old). The Greek word is: enchanters. Evil men and enchanters will grow worse and worse. In other words, incantation is one major form of occult practice. Again, it’s the occult. And I have come to the place in my own view, where if there are prolonged problems that cannot be resolved in a church, or in a life or in a home, somewhere behind it is the occult. And you will not really resolve those problems until you get to that root.